Mars Rover "Curiosity" makes successful landing

Cheering erupts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena following the successful landiing of the Curiosity rover

PASADENA, California -- NASA made robotic planetary exploration history and chalked up a major success with the successful landing early Monday morning of the Mars Rover Curiosity on the Martian surface.

Curiosity landed, on schedule, near the designated landing site, Gale Crater at 1:31 am EDT. The elaborate "sky crane" landing sequence performed flawlessly, gently lowering the rover to the surface following the 150 million mile flight flight to Mars that began last November.

Excitement reigned among mission control personnel at NASA'S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena following the successful landing, following months of uncertainty in the technologically unprecedented $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, designed to explore whether Mars does or ever could have supported microbial life.

The one-ton Curiosity rover, about the size of a Mini Cooper auto, had to slow from 13,000 miles to just a few feet per second in just seven minutes, a time lapse NASA has termed "seven minutes of terror."

The first images of the Martian surface arrived back on earth at 1:39 AM EDT, just minutes after Curiosity landed.

"The wheels of Curiosity are now on Mars, where it will continue the search for signs of life," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at a news conference that began shortly after the successful touch down. "Nothing has been more technologically challenging as this mission."

A jubilant MSL technical team congratulated each other with high fives to the cheers and applause of scores of technicians and mission controllers at JPL's mission headquarters.

"Tonight was a great adventure. This will be an inspiration to the young people of the world. They will be the ones tocontinue to carry the torch."

"Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars," said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives."

John Grunsfeld, NASA's Associate Administrator for Science, exulted in the mission's successful landing. "We said Mars is hard, and success is not guaranteed. There are those who said NASA has lost it abilty to explore. I think we've shown that we still know how to explore."

He gave credit to America's international partners, but reminded the crowd that "Curiosity was American made."

"Look at the team of blue shirts here. You are the ones who did this," he said.